Berman: Mayor defends Big League Dreams

The headlines of Sunday’s East Valley Tribune screamed “Big League Scandal?” Usually headline stories are reserved for well-researched issues of great importance. I was shocked to read this story, which was not based on any research or actual interviews; it was based entirely on a heavily edited and factually incorrect television program on KNXV-TV (Channel 15).

Channel 15 interviewed me for about 45 minutes on opening day at Big League Dreams. What the Tribune writer, and everyone else, saw on their Web link was about six minutes in length. Wonder what was on the rest of the tape? A good part of it was a litany of snide innuendo, false accusations and abuse. A half-hour of that goes a long way and if I appeared to have lost my legendary charm toward the end, I hope you can all forgive me.

The thrust of both the Channel 15 and Tribune stories was pretty simple: The mayor wanted a new park, so he let his friends at Big League Dreams write a Request for Proposals that only they could respond to. Next, the mayor signed a contract with Big League Dreams to build the park for $22.5 million, but through some back-door deals allowed Big League Dreams to be paid $40 million dollars for the park. A great story — but none of it is true. The Gilbert Town Council, not the mayor, decided to build Elliot District Park, now known as Big League Dreams. Big League Dreams didn’t write the RFP, Town Manager George Pettit did. Three groups responded with different concepts for the park. Big League Dreams proposed a baseball park. They won the bid to manage the park and were paid a total of $1.13 million for license fees, consulting services and a feasibility study. A lot of money, but a far cry from the $40 million implied.

Big League Dreams estimated we could build the Big League Dreams Park for $22.5 million. They were wrong. Big League Dreams is not a construction company and did not bid on the construction of the park. The low bid to build the park was from MA Mortenson and Kitchell CEM. The bid was $35,022,000. Gilbert later added some things not in the initial bid, which increased the project cost by about $5 million.

Big League Dreams didn’t get one cent of the $40 million construction cost. That money went to the people who built the park. The original bid price was honored. Even with the $5 million worth of items not in the original bid, the project still was only 12.5 percent over the original bid price.

No project is perfect, including this one, but none of us did anything improper or illegal. All the information that was made available to Channel 15 and the Tribune is available to anyone under the Freedom of Information Act.

All you have to do is ask.